ariskany_evan

Surprised at how much I like the look and feel of this. I'm used to overlooking my distaste for the garish cartoony hodgepodge (hello HOTS) of LOMAs and digging into the mechanics, but this is much more to my liking. Though I should note that a character like Twin Blast is hilarious. The banner image here gives him a Channing Tatum look, but then if you scroll down to see his "skins" photo the travesty unfolds (https://www.epicgames.com/paragon/en-US/heroes/twinblast). So pouty! Speaking of that link, I love their website. I was worried I'd have to watch copious youtube footage to get an overall scope of the hero pool, but having looping videos for every hero's abilities is huge. Reading that something takes 2.5 seconds of channeling is one thing, but watching it loop gives a much better feel. The 30 minute matches means I can only get in one match a night, so it's going to be very slow going for me. It took me about 6 months before I felt comfortable doing regular PvP in HOTS, though without text chat, I may jump in sooner since I can't get flamed. Anyone have any favorite streamers that you'd recommend? A cursory search in youtube didn't bring up any clear results. Also any good resource to learn the basics (cards, what those pools are that make you invisible, etc.)?

Now that Kentucky and Virginia are covered, here's hoping Maryland and Delaware gets some love in game titles. Have a whole Mid-Atlantic scene. Or maybe indie devs as a collective should take up Sufjan Stevens' abandoned 50 states project?

I am going to try out Paragon this week. I've been playing a bunch of HOTS recently, and the thought of a couch LOMA sounds great. I'll report back, promise!

It would be a pretty cheap movie to make, right? One actor; one voice over actor; 3 extras (2 young women on the lake, shadowy figure shining its flashlight on you). Nature is your set. Most of the budget would probably go to special effects to make the fire work. The feeling of being in the space was an important part of the experience, and movies almost never do that for me. Putting the focus on the story and interactions between the characters would bring the wrong things into focus. Hopefully they push this in an more experimental direction. Really long, quiet shots of the wind blowing through the trees, etc. "Wyoming is a character." LOL.

Hopefully it's all in first person!

Some fun theories, not really backed up by anything:

The use of jump cuts in first person works so well. Not the biggest fan of things this symbolic, but it was a fun ride. Definitely recommended.

I am quitting Tap Tycoon today. (clicker game for mobile devices) It gave me purpose through a strange period of change in my life, as every minute that passed by earned me money in the game. It has nice undertones pointing to the military-industrial complex. Click to make money so that you can make even more money. Every time you reinvest (prestige) you "send troops to war". You're competing in a "war" with all the players in your country against all of the other countries playing the game. The US always won in the three weeks I played, which gives all of the US players a bonus, which helps them to make even more money, which makes it even harder for the other countries to compete. Like most clickers, there's timers and exponential math. The game loop is tiny and inconsequential and lovely. I no longer need the hole filled, so I'm happily moving on.

Trading in a few games today for some quick cash: No Man's Sky, Fallout 4, NBA2k16. No Man's - Fell off of this one so hard. The crafting is beyond clunky and the worlds got dull real fast. Fallout 4 - Completed the main mission, but was left with an empty feeling. None of the DLC sparked any interest. NBA2k16 - After Nick's tale of how silly the career mode is, I had to give it a shot. It's pretty unbearable in a fun way. The pacing, editing, and scenes that they chose to include were all very off. Nice to see that even bringing in someone with a cinematic eye can't make cutscenes any better. Overt storytelling doesn't work for me in this medium. Got to my second season and tried out a few games and practices and my motivation fell off. Very complicated game!

I've, uh, never played FC2.... Open-world SP FPSs (OWSPFPSs) fare a little better for me. But there's something about them that still wears thin much faster that most genres. Even playing the short Titanflaps 2 tutorial I was like "OMG is this almost over". I'll talk to my therapist on Monday about it to see if I can coax out the root of my emotional distress and report back.

Gave it a spin last weekend. Having not played T1 in over a year, I'm surprised how familiar it felt. Shooting AI and pilots. Taking a second to dump points off didn't feel like much of a twist in gameplay. Everything felt nicely tweaked, but T1 wasn't that broken to begin with. I'm happy for these stress tests, because it allows me to gauge my interest in playing the game. Something about following this hobby makes me want to experience every game that gets positive press, but getting my hands on things always reminds me that I have particular tastes. (Also not a fan of SP FPS campaigns in general. There's a tedium there that I haven't been able to capture in words, but my interest in T2 was solely in MP) I wonder how game design decisions like shortening the amount of time it takes to get a Titan play out in the studio, especially when they get implemented so immediately after feedback. I would think it would take some time for them to retweak the balance of the game, but instead they put out an instantaneous patch shortening the amount of time it takes to get a Titan. Does this mean that they had some internal conflict about which way to go and built it so that they had a balanced version of the shortened time waiting in the wings just in case? Isn't there a butterfly effect to that kind of a tweak? Or are they playing it fast and loose?

That's a great point. I would've seen these screen shots so differently had I not played the game, but now my brain moves the POV on those shots around and they just don't shine the same way. Good framing Korax!

This game is fulfilling the same hole in my brain that clickers fill. Progression systems that everyone points to as leading to nothing. I'm playing Tap Tycoon and NMS concurrently and am loving it. If you're in the mood for nihilistic, be-in-the-moment gameplay arcs...

I'm guessing base-building will only be something that matters once you get to the center of the galaxy (whatever that means, I'm on my second planet still). Maybe that's an end-game system to give people a reason to go back out into the rest of the galaxy and continue mining. Timing-wise it would make sense as something to drip-feed the release of, since it'll feel like an "awesome" "addition" after the portion of their rabid fanbase has gotten to the center, rather than just another part of the base game (no pun intended, sorry).

Had a weird promo dell gift card, so what else should I use it towards! $15 real money for No Man's Sky puts it back to the small game price and lowers my expectations to a wonderfully comfortable place. All of the footage I've seen so far makes all of the planets seem like underdeveloped biomes. Has anyone run into any "woods" or is the horizon always available?

Yikes, thanks for the research. I'd been enjoying everyone's stories and Chris's streams. Oh well...

My non-spoilery criticism is that it does get very tiresome when you don't do the puzzles in the correct order. Oftentimes you enter an area and can go left or right. I found myself going all the way in one direction to hit a wall. I'd then need to run all the way back to the center, then go in the other direction. Grab what I think I need, flip a switch or something. Then run all the way back in the other direction. Only to discover that I needed to re-flip the switch because it inexplicably changed something at the other end of the hallway. Some of the puzzle rooms get quite long in this way and it was maddening. I'm not great with environmental analysis, though, so this may have just been me. Happy to have played it! I recommend it. I agree with all of the praise for the game, just had some negative thoughts to pour out. Played it on my 4.5 year old Macbook Pro booted into Windows and it performed admirably, just starting choking up towards the end.

New game from the developers of rymdkapsel twofold inc. (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.grapefrukt.games.twofold&hl=en) Much more straightforward highscore-based puzzle game than rymdkapsel. Played it a bunch over the weekend and loved my time with it. Little hints of strategy popped up each time I started a new game. Wish there was a campaign with specific challenges, etc., as the score chase won't keep me playing as long. VERY delightful art/music Highly recommended!

According to this Polygon article (http://www.polygon.com/2016/4/18/11424314/gears-of-war-4-compete-free-to-play-esports-world) both Halo 5 and the upcoming Gears of War 4 won't be charging for maps.

I subscribed for the first few months. A lot of good genre-specific games, but the small pile of monthly games felt more like homework than something I craved, so I stopped the sub.

Yeah, not too dark. Sounded exactly like tired energy that tends negative. Your other creative guests sound so cheery that I was a bit hesitant to trust them, though Sarah did admit that if she really got into thinking about the negative potentials of her career, it would be too much and potentially self-annihilating. I really appreciate that he didn't sugarcoat his feelings, especially regarding his reaction to reviews and the public response. Most creative successes tend to speak of their fans in a reverent fashion, but having Alx say (roughly) "Listen, the opinion of someone I don't know doesn't really affect me" was nice to hear. "There are plenty of easier ways to make money [than designing a game]." That rubbed me the wrong way. I know it was an off-the-cuff remark, but I wonder if that's a common sentiment of the game design community. You have programming skills, hence finding regular work is easy? (I have a weird obsession with the economics of art, though, and the way in which game-making skills translates to other forms of employment is fascinating. Compared to something like music, where if you go all-in on a music project/band for three years and it fails, re-entering the job market is much dicier)

Love the podcast. Very true about Los Angeles bubbles. I'm an east-sider (somehow found a nice, cheap apt in Silver Lake), so going out to Culver City, West Hollywood, Santa Monica always feels like a whole to-do. I'm perfectly content with my set of neighborhoods (Silver Lake, Los Feliz, Downtown, Echo Park, Atwater, Highland Park), and am almost overwhelmed by all of the micro-communities. Side note: Frogtown has the best name. That being said I'm happy to hear about what's going on way over where you all are. Interview with Brendan was really great. Love how obsessed Teddy is with his Forest Gump analogy. Feels like it's a question about zeitgeist and whether it can be felt by the creator, but I don't think a massive-scale cultural phenomenon can be known until it happens. This is why the music industry functions like a bad investment bank; they fund 10 artists and hope that 1 of them can at least recoup the cost of the other 9. Each artist can make something truly spectacular, that they (and the record label) feel good about for the rest of their lives, but it might not resonate. That being said, the video game industry is still so young and fresh-faced. It's like when "Last Year at Marienbad" came out in 1961 it was a (minor) cultural phenomenon. People talked about it at cocktail parties, it was exciting. Plenty of movies like "Last Year at Marienbad" get made nowadays, but it's not a conversational thing. It's an "art film", it's a "passion project". To put it bluntly, weird shit can be made in video games and it still has the chance to be something people talk about, and could even be elevated to zeitgeist status. It thankfully (and excitedly) still feels like a no man's land. So I wish Teddy well on his launch! May he become the Forest Gump of video game designers.

LOL, sounds a lot like the self-trust issues I'm working through with my therapist atm.... I'm trying to keep an eye on the chore-feeling creeping in. I quit playing tons of games for "what's the point of seeing it all the way through" reasons, so I'm doing my best to trust the fact that it's enjoyable and engaging.

I've been playing Clash Royale for maybe two weeks? Still puttering around in Zone 3; I think if I really concentrated and didn't just futz around with silly deck combinations I could move up to the fourth zone, but I'm in no rush. Haven't spent any money so far. Planning on doing it in April when my budget resets as a "thank you" but I don't feel like it really gives that much of an advantage. The game is starting to feel a little stale, but I'm sure once I get up to the next zone the new cards will give it some more life. I don't mind the Free to Play mechanics, since I enjoy the battle mechanics. I don't want to play the game for more than 5 minutes at any moment, so I'm happy to the have time gating.

Since this is a spoiler from the very first moments of the game (and doesn't actually tell any story stuff, just a structural note), I'm gonna post it here and not in the spoiler thread: My wife and I played for a good hour and half last night. We got up to get ready for bed and both went, "SHIT, it's 11pm already!" Feels like a good sign that we both lost track of time.